The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) are very effective to promptly identify a person, as well as link or eliminate a criminal with a crime. The country currently has one single laboratory at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) which provides information on criminals’ fingerprints, but maintaining an electronic fingerprint database is still at an elementary stage.
Bangladesh Police under the Police Reform Programme (PRP) took an initiative in 2012 to populate the Automated Fingerprint Information System (AFIS). This initiative involved collecting approximately 67,000 fingerprints from convicts and prisoners in prisons throughout Bangladesh.
The AFIS database population will increase the likelihood of investigators being able to match fingerprints found at crime scenes with fingerprints of previously incarcerated individuals. In addition, the law enforcement agencies have started using the Election Commission’s (EC) citizen fingerprint database of more than 91.9 million citizens above the age of 18 to identify dead bodies and criminals by matching individuals’ fingerprints. Undoubtedly it will help solve many sensitive cases quickly.
Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) is more effective than AFIS as it is comparatively easy to collect DNA samples from the crime scene. For instance, in the case of State v Norman (USA), the accused was detected by matching the DNA samples collected from the crime scene 11 years after the crime was committed with those of already preserved in the CODIS. Bangladesh did not have the technological support to maintain CODIS.
However, on September 25, 2013, for the identification of 321 unidentified dead bodies of Savar’s Rana Plaza fatalities, the US Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) provided Bangladesh with the sophisticated Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) software free of cost.
Established in Dhaka Medical College (DMC), this highly sophisticated DNA software programme can be used to detect the offenders in sensitive cases like Sagor-Runi murder case.
The provisions of sections 45 and 60 of the Evidence Act, 1872 seem to hinder the utilisation of DNA and fingerprint evidence to the courts because these sections treat these as merely expert opinion in secondary evidence, making it very difficult to corroborate such evidence to ensure conviction of the offenders.
Recently, the Cabinet approved the draft Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Act 2013 providing, inter alia, the admissibility of the DNA evidence to the courts as primary evidence. Once the draft is enacted as law in the parliament, such difficulties will be removed.
